Obama’s Budget Lacks Audacity

President Obama today is putting forward a politically safe budget that kicks the entitlement program problem down the road for the next president – or his second term – or making sweeping adjustments to the budget.

Where’s the AUDACITY? Where’s the leadership on reforming Social Security or Medicare? Where is the tax reform Obama and his aides have been tempting us with for months? Or how about something politically risky, like a cut in the wasteful ethanol subsidy that ultimately raises food prices for the inner city poor and drains the federal budget? Obama knows the ethanol subsidy is a mistake. I’m sure of it.

Slinking away from the real problems is not very audacious, now is it?

I guess one could say that this budget does represent an Audacity of Hope – the hope that someone else will fix these problems or that he can do it when the political heat is off.

I understand this. Who wants to run on having cut Social Security? Well, there you go again, asking silly questions.

Ronald Reagan did it.

In 1983, he struck a deal with congressional Democrats that raised the retirement age from 65 to 67 and started taxing Social Security benefits. It was a bipartisan deal struck at a time when the country was just coming out of a recession and Reagan’s reelection was far from assured.

THE COUNTRY CAN TAKE TOUGH MEDICINE FROM COURAGEOUS POLITICIANS IF IT IS NEEDED AND EXPLAINED.

And the country understands. Poll after poll reports that Americans get the peril posed by the deficit.

Now it just needs courageous politicians.

The Republicans aren’t really talking about entitlement reform either. They say the president must lead on this, which is true. But if they want him to dig in first, they could at least set the table.

7 Responses to Obama’s Budget Lacks Audacity

So far neither R nor D is touching defense and making the real cuts: there are probably close to 15 high-tech weaponry projects (in the billions) that need to be cut (like the amphibious Marine tank). But like you said … who will take the first step?

Mr. Ryan will touch nothing close to home and Mr. Obama has so many lobbyist/entitlement objectives his budget will have no red meat for Norquist.

Whats missing from this is, indeed, courageous politicians. Someone to stand up and *kill* SS, cut the defense budge in half, cut off all entitlement programs to mothers on crack with babies and send up the black flag and say ‘everyman for himself.’ It’s time the country learns how to live on its own without suckling from the old, feeble teet of Uncle Sam.

Namby, meet Pamby. He wants to make the Reps the bad guys–this is such a stupid game. I would rather have seen a percent cut–let the agencies ferret out the overlapping programs, stupid studies, committees, task groups, czars, single source contracts, Congressional pet projects, useless crap, etc. That Teach for America–ooo, they want to cut education–there have been several stories about how this is a stepping stone for only Ivy grads to get a start. There is a back story to everything. And I am sick tp puking of these guys in their $2000 suits saying, “We will have to cut your Social Security, sorry, it’s the only way…we all have to make sacrifices, blah blah.” I could spend a week locked up in a hotel room or at my kitchen table going over line items–but this is their job!

Donald Rumsfeld gave an excellent critique of massive government redtape during his book tour when he said: “… there is this massive overlapping of government oversight that when all is said and done, you’ve red-tapped the red tap and now no one can do anything.”

Keith, great point. How did the Greatest Generation not only survive the depression but fight (and win) the Second World War? Much can be learned from this generation … thrift, hardwork, integrity, honesty, toughness, gritty determination.

[…] Keith Koffler on February 16, 2011, 8:05 amIt came in response to criticism that he has no plan at all to solve the nation’s entitlement program.So what I’ve said is that if you look at the […]

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